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Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

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Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#181

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dragonwriter wrote: post #180
ekianjo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems. You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. And there you go for a another downward s…

> You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. Only if you aren't taking cash from someone to pay for it; UBI doesn't conjure money from nowhere, it redistributes it. The things disproportionately demanded by those who are better off with UBI will have some rise in prices (but not enough that they fail to be more affo…

Its not a foregone conclusion that commodities will rise in price if everybody has a bit more money. The rich have a whole lot more money. So the influx may raise prices, but never as much as to make the BI useless. In fact they'd have to go up infinitely to make any money useless, right?

And its entirely likely the money will be conjured up from nowhere - minted for the purpose. This solves two problems. One is that taxes need not be raised to cover the cost. The other is, it becomes a small builtin inflation that serves to redistribute wealth. That's a good thing in America at the moment.

And if the BI isn't universal, if its means-tested, then you're missing the point entirely. The testing of means is flawed, very expensive, and inaccurate. Its always gamed to disincentivize folks from getting a job, which is probably a bad thing. And it turns it into a patronizing system again, where big brother decides who's worthy.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#182

Post by jboggan »

deciplex wrote: post #93
SwellJoe wrote: post #62

If you'd told me ten years ago I would ever support a basic income, I would have laughed. My thought would have been, "People getting paid without doing anything? Absurd!" But, in the past few years I've thoroughly changed my mind on this, and a number of other fronts. I now fully support a basic income (though I think a debate needs to happen about how much that basic income ought to be and how it ought to be funded…

I agree with you, but how do you propose going about giving this underclass the leverage they need to make this happen? Short of encouraging them to kill rich people of course, which anyway would get you killed or neutralized long before you had any hope of success. Our system is simply not set up to reliably make changes for the benefit of people with no leverage over it in the first place.

It's almost as if we need some sort of . . . vanguard . . . for the proletariat.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#183

Post by chrisbennet »

philwelch wrote: post #172
chrisbennet wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your argument. On the other hand... Currently, employers that pay a less than living wage are subsidized in effect - the government (tax payers) makes up the difference in the form of food stamps, healthcare, etc. Is it right that businesses should get subsidized labor?

It's actually the other way around. These employers are basically subsidizing the social services. If the best job Jimmy can get pays minimum wage, then logically, if Jimmy couldn't even get that job, he wouldn't earn a living wage; he'd earn nothing. If Jimmy had the opportunity to earn a living wage, after all, he would go get the job that pays that living wage and quit Wal-Mart. But, since Wal-Mart is the best job…

I don't agree that Walmart is subsidizing the state but I could see an angle that is similar.

If the government stopped paying workers any benefits, would the cost of the worker's labor go up? If it didn't, that would indicate that employers were paying the market rate (speaking strictly from a economics perspective). I think running this experiment would confirm your argument that Jimmy would become unemployable as his market value would not increase, just his "cost".

I still think minimum wage should be increased but now I'm less sure if it a good idea/solution.

The elephant in the room is that jobs are going the way of the dodo bird. At some point there will be very few jobs left and the market value of labor will fall to near zero. At that point employers will have no customers either. Even if an individual employer can see that far ahead (like Henry Ford did) and raises his wages, he will be at a disadvantage to other employers who don't raise their wages. Forcing all employers to a higher minimum wage will get around that - but only for a while. Eventually those jobs will be automated and we'll be back to the no wages/no customers situation.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#184

Post by dragonwriter »

MCRed wrote: post #146
SwellJoe wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Although I really like the idea of minimum income, elkanjos point has to be addressed. Just yesterday there was an article about trailer parks ownership. They will simply increase rent to what their clientele can afford." Actually, I think that's one of the arguments for a basic income. It will lift some of those people out of the class that is subject to the whims of slumlords and trailer park owners, decreasing de…

Why don't we just cut taxes for everyone who makes less than $50k a year? Cut them to zero for all of those people. At least federal taxes, but it would be nice if there was a moratorium or movement to do it for state taxes as well. For someone making $50k a year, right now they are paying around $7.5k in federal taxes. That right there is close to the $12k the Basic Income would provide. And this would be a lot easi…

> Why don't we just cut taxes for everyone who makes less than $50k a year? Cut them to zero for all of those people.

If you are referring to federal income taxes, specifically, that's actually an increase for many of those people. (Because of refundable credits, particularly EITC.)

> For someone making $50k a year, right now they are paying around $7.5k in federal taxes.

Please show your work here.

> For instance, the welfare programs primary job is to hand out money, and it costs them $75 in administrative overhead to hand out $25! Do you think a new federal bureaucracy is going to be more efficient?

No, the primary function of welfare administration is to prevent the wrong people from getting money, not handing out money. Handing out money is easy, doing the work to apply the conditional criteria which determine who is not entitled to money, and who, of those entitled to money, is entitled to less than the maximum benefit and how much less is the costly part. Which is exactly the function that UBI eliminates.

(You could do UBI through the tax system as a universal, refundable credit; except for the first year, having it be trailing this way is the same, in effect, as providing it up front.)

> And if you don't eliminate taxes for poor people, then they're going to end up paying higher taxes too to pay for basic income.

Not necessarily. You can raise taxes on one subset of the income spectrum without either raising or eliminating it elsewhere (for instance, you could raise the rate at the top tax bracket, add another bracket on top of that at a still higher rate, and eliminate the favorable tax treatment of capital gains versus other income, without raising taxes on the poor.)

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#185

Post by SwellJoe »

selimthegrim wrote: post #173
SwellJoe wrote: post #62

If you'd told me ten years ago I would ever support a basic income, I would have laughed. My thought would have been, "People getting paid without doing anything? Absurd!" But, in the past few years I've thoroughly changed my mind on this, and a number of other fronts. I now fully support a basic income (though I think a debate needs to happen about how much that basic income ought to be and how it ought to be funded…

I live in New Orleans. Black male unemployment (excluding those jailed) is hovering around 50%.

And, among people who are employed, they are often paid so poorly as to still be below the poverty line.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#186

Post by dragonwriter »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #181
dragonwriter wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. Only if you aren't taking cash from someone to pay for it; UBI doesn't conjure money from nowhere, it redistributes it. The things disproportionately demanded by those who are better off with UBI will have some rise in prices (but not enough that they fail to be more affo…

Its not a foregone conclusion that commodities will rise in price if everybody has a bit more money. The rich have a whole lot more money. So the influx may raise prices, but never as much as to make the BI useless. In fact they'd have to go up infinitely to make any money useless, right? And its entirely likely the money will be conjured up from nowhere - minted for the purpose. This solves two problems. One is that…

> Its not a foregone conclusion that commodities will rise in price if everybody has a bit more money.

Yes, it pretty much is. If everyone has more money at t1 than at t0, and nothing else changes, then you've got more dollars chasing the same goods and you would expect that the price of goods would increase.

> The rich have a whole lot more money.

That's not relevant to anything.

> So the influx may raise prices, but never as much as to make the BI useless.

That's what I said: "The things disproportionately demanded by those who are better off with UBI will have some rise in prices (but not enough that they fail to be more affordable to those purchasing them in normal cases)"

> And its entirely likely the money will be conjured up from nowhere - minted for the purpose.

Every UBI proposal I've seen has called for it to be funded by some combination of replacing existed tax-funded programs and increased progressive taxation. So, as actually proposed, it would not be funded by money conjured from nowhere. (If it is, however, the expected effect on market-specific price levels is still the same as a tax-based funding mechanism, after you adjust for the increase in overall price levels resulting from the overall increase in the money supply in the "mint new money" approach.)

> And if the BI isn't universal, if its means-tested, then you're missing the point entirely.

That's fine, I didn't suggested doing that, so I don't see the relevance.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#187

Post by selimthegrim »

kamaal wrote: post #174
true_religion wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truthfully, all first world countries are gradually applying more and more welfare laws so there's no where to really escape to unless you want to live in say the Saychelles or Cyphrus or another tax-haven. Now its certainly fine for your money to live in the Saychelles, but many people value their home country for its people and you don't get that value without actually living amongst them.

>>Truthfully, all first world countries are gradually applying more and more welfare laws so there's no where to really escape to unless you want to live in say the Saychelles or Cyphrus or another tax-haven. I come from a country(India) where generations of some very smart people have left to come and stay in the US. Guess Why? For a lot of time, it was pointless to even start a business in India(Given taxes and reg…

What percentage of government revenue and GDP is being lost to Mandal, etc, versus the coal scam, the power scam in Delhi that Kejriwal tried to expose, the cell spectrum scam, etc, freebies to Reliance and Ambani?

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#188

Post by SwellJoe »

kamaal wrote: post #174
true_religion wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truthfully, all first world countries are gradually applying more and more welfare laws so there's no where to really escape to unless you want to live in say the Saychelles or Cyphrus or another tax-haven. Now its certainly fine for your money to live in the Saychelles, but many people value their home country for its people and you don't get that value without actually living amongst them.

>>Truthfully, all first world countries are gradually applying more and more welfare laws so there's no where to really escape to unless you want to live in say the Saychelles or Cyphrus or another tax-haven. I come from a country(India) where generations of some very smart people have left to come and stay in the US. Guess Why? For a lot of time, it was pointless to even start a business in India(Given taxes and reg…

"All due to welfare policies."

Really, all due to welfare policies? It doesn't have anything to do with India's colonial history, corruption, inconsistency in the legal infrastructure for new business vs. old established business, etc.? (I'm genuinely asking. I am not at all an expert on India's business climate, but I know that most of my friends who have immigrated to the US from other places, including India, to start companies did so for a wide variety of reasons, and none of them ever said it was because of welfare.)

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#189

Post by TheCoelacanth »

noonespecial wrote: post #145
learc83 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If we paid for this basic income via inflation -- increasing the money supply No one here is arguing that a basic income should be paid for through inflation. There is a difference between inflation and income redistribution. >but it will go up a bit more than the net effect of the basic income, wiping it out Yes, if we paid for it by inflation, but the argument is to pay for through some kind of income/wealth redis…

>No one here is arguing that a basic income should be paid for through inflation. Actually, I kind of am! I suggest that we absurdly just give $1MM to everyone and ask what would happen to prices. They'd skyrocket of course. But what else would happen? Consider an economy with just 2 people. One with a net worth of $7500 and the other with $10MM. Give them each $1MM. What happens to their wealth relative to each othe…

The problem is that the $10MM likely isn't held in cash, it would be held in primarily assets like stocks that are resistant to inflation.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#190

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dragonwriter wrote: post #186
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not a foregone conclusion that commodities will rise in price if everybody has a bit more money. The rich have a whole lot more money. So the influx may raise prices, but never as much as to make the BI useless. In fact they'd have to go up infinitely to make any money useless, right? And its entirely likely the money will be conjured up from nowhere - minted for the purpose. This solves two problems. One is that…

> Its not a foregone conclusion that commodities will rise in price if everybody has a bit more money. Yes, it pretty much is. If everyone has more money at t1 than at t0, and nothing else changes, then you've got more dollars chasing the same goods and you would expect that the price of goods would increase. > The rich have a whole lot more money. That's not relevant to anything. > So the influx may raise prices, bu…

Think about it like this: if you give everybody some money, but they already have 1000 X that much money in the bank, then prices don't go up much. The rich have a lot of money, and they're buying stuff too. They matter as much as anybody; no, they matter 100X as much as everybody else.

All tax plans are of course entirely fictional of course.

And as for means-testing, the line about limiting it to folks above/below a certain income certainly sounds like meanstesting. What else could that have meant?

OH! I meant to respond to the parent comment. Sorry for the confusion!

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